May 13: What You Came to Look For, Doris Day, Car Accident

Zaphod and Trillian sharing a moment aboard the stolen Heart of Gold . . .

There was a tap at Zaphod's door.  It slid open.

"Zaphod . . .?"

"Yeah?"

Trillian stood outlines in an oval of light.

"I think we just found what you came to look for."

"Hey, yeah?"

Unlike Zaphod and Trillian, I don't know what I'm looking for tonight.  

I think I was looking forward to some peace after a long Monday.  This morning, I sat in my car, looking at the medical office building where I work, thinking, "I don't want to do this today."  A short while after I clocked in, I got a text from my sister-in-law, informing that Doris Day had died earlier in the morning.  That sort of took more wind out of my sails.

I grew up listening to Doris Day's singing.  She was one of my mother's favorites.  We watched her movies when they showed up on television.  (I can probably still sing all the songs to Calamity Jane by heart.)  It felt sort of like losing another part of my mother.  As I sit typing this post, I have a Doris Day album playing in the background on my laptop.  I still know all the words.

Shortly after I got home this afternoon, I got a phone call from my wife.  My three sisters and mother were in a car accident.  The brakes failed on my sister's car, and they had rear-ended the vehicle in front of them.  Nobody was hurt, but I had to go pick them up and drive them home.  I got to the scene of the accident before the police arrived.  I loaded my mother and two sisters into my Subaru and drove them home,  Then I went back to pick up my sister who had been driving the car.  She was still talking to the police as the tow truck was hauling away van.

I got back home again about 6 p.m.  I would say there's a good five thousand dollars in damage to my sister's car, but the important thing is that all of them were not injured.  My mother and sister, Rose, didn't even seem to remember the accident when I dropped them off.  Both of them were more focused on getting back into the familiar ground of their home.

And now, Doris Day is singing me into the evening.  I can remember my mother putting her Doris Day records on her stereo when she wanted me to take a nap.  Many an afternoon, I fell asleep to my mother's and Doris Day's voices dueting in long pillars of sunlight.  Even now, on this May evening in the year 2019, I can hear the ghost of my mother's voice singing with Doris Day.  It fills me with both warmth and melancholy.

It doesn't really help anything to dwell on the past.  I know that.  Nostalgia can be a trap.  You get stuck in memories, thinking everything used to be so much better.  Sometimes, you play the game of "what if?"--as in, "What if I had asked my mother more questions?  Found out more about her childhood?"  (I've beat myself up over that one quite a bit.)  The time for that is gone, however.

I have to hold on to the present, not brood over the past or worry about the future.  Try to build happiness out of the everyday.  Minute by minute.  Laugh a lot.  Say "I love you" a lot.  Maybe sing a few Doris Day songs to my kids.

Join Saint Marty:  "Once, I had a secret loooove, who lived within the heart of meeeeee . . ."